Sweet Child o' Mine

All five members are credited and Mike Clink produced. It began as a jam at the band's Sunset Strip house: Slash with a circus-like melody, Stradlin on chords, McKagan on a bass line and Adler on a beat; the bridge and solo were added later in Burbank, and Spencer Proffer suggested the end breakdown in demo sessions. Slash later told the Eddie Trunk podcast it wasn't a warm-up exercise, that he came up with the riff around 1986 messing around at the house, and that Rose heard it and built the song. The single, with a live "It's So Easy" recorded at the Marquee Club on June 28, 1987 on the B-side, came out in the US on June 3, 1988 and in the UK on August 8. The album cut is 5:55 and the radio edit is about 4:53, though sources disagree.

It reached number 1 on the Hot 100 and Cash Box, 24 in the UK in 1988 and 6 in 1989 after a remix, and is certified five-times platinum in the UK. The video, directed by Nigel Dick at Mendiola's Ballroom in Huntington Park, won an MTV Video Music Award in 1989 and has passed 1.7 billion YouTube views. Rolling Stone ranked it 196th on its 2004 list and 88th in 2021, Guitar World placed the solo 37th and Total Guitar readers voted the intro the best riff ever. Sheryl Crow covered it in 1999 for the film Big Daddy and won a Grammy; Taken by Trees recorded it in 2009 for a John Lewis Christmas advert. It was heard in Thor: Love and Thunder and the Cobra Kai finale.